In recent years there has been a growing attention in the use of soccer as a vehicle to improve mental health. Local health organizations are beginning to understand that soccer may be an effective way to promote good mental health and help increase access to, and uptake of, services for mental health service users (Pringle 2009). The aim of this study was to investigate effects of soccer practice on the psychophysical perception and performance in psychotic subjects. Eighteen overweight male subjects, 10 trained psychotics [TPs] (age: 36+/-6 years; height: 164+/-7.00 cm; weight: 77.44+/-13.60 kg; BMI: 28.55+/-3.70) and 8 no-trained psychotics [NTPs] (age: 35+/-5 years; height: 163+/-4.00 cm; weight: 76.71+/-9.75 kg; BMI: 28.65+/-2.62) of Local Health of Palermo (Sicily, Italy) participated in this study. TPs were trained for 12 weeks by two sessions/week. In particular, every trained session included: a recording phase (~10 min), a social interaction phase (~10 min), a warm up period (~20 min), a training period (~50 min) including soccer technical-tactical exercises and a football game, cool down period (~10 min) and a feedback phase (~10 min). NTPs did not perform any sport activity during the experimentation. Physical condition and performance of the subjects have been evaluated by body weight (BW), body mass index (BMI), 30 meter sprint test (30mST) and slalom test running with ball (STB) between 5 cones located 50 cm apart. Instead, psychophysical perception from psychotics was studied using the SF-12 health status questionnaire measuring self-rated health (Faulkner G et al., 2007). It investigated the summary measures PCS-12 (physical domain of SF-12, scores ranging from 0 to 70) and MCS-12 (mental domain of SF-12, scores ranging from 0 to 70). All data were acquired before and after the experimentation. We found that TPs improved PCS-12 and MCS-12 scores and 30mST and STB performances than NTPs group after the training period. Moreover, TPs group decreased BW and BMI than NTPs after the experimental period.
Soccer practice appears to be able to improve psychophysical health in psychotic subjects. Indeed, our study showed that programmed physical activity can reduce antipsychotic medication-related weight gain and improve psychophysical perception and performance in psychotic subjects. This because soccer, in agreement with Pringle (2009), could be seen as an organized social phenomenon able to promote a sporting therapeutic and healthy antagonism.
Faulkner G, Cohn T, Remington G, Irving H: Body mass index, waist circumference and quality of life in individuals with schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2007; 90(1-3):174-8.
Pringle A: The growing role of football as a vehicle for interventions in mental health care. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs. 2009; 16(6):553-7.